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Monday, 2 April 2018

What’s going on in Gaza. A Short History.

One thing that the Fatah-led
Palestinian Authority shares with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza
is the dream of a world without Israel and Jews.

They both propagate a world in
which the Palestinians will rule the whole of ‘Palestine’ “from the River to
the Sea.” What they will do with seven million Jews goes unanswered. It’s
enough that their children are taught that Israel is rightfully theirs in a fake
history of victimhood that goes back to a story of dispossession dating back to
1948 when four Arab armies (Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq) tried to destroy the
nascent Jewish state and failed.

Arabs fled the raging battles and
those that didn’t were ordered to leave by the Arab Higher Command to make way
for the invading Arab forces who were determined to drive the Jews into the
sea. Hence the Arab refugee problem was created by invading Arabs bent on
Jewish destruction.

After their failed war, the Arab
League led by Egypt set up an ‘All Palestine Government’ in Gaza headed by the
notorious Haj Amin al-Husseini who had met Adolph Hitler, toured the Nazi death
camps, established a pro-German Muslim fighting force in Bosnia, and was
planning with the Germans the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem in the
Middle East.

In Gaza, he formed a Holy War
Army, basically the first jihadi militia in modern times. The Gaza Strip was
controlled by Egypt following the 1948 war.

After this war, Abdullah, the
Hashemite king who ruled Transjordan, that had been the greater part of the now
deceased Palestine, controlled Judea & Samaria and the Old City of
Jerusalem. He recognized the danger to his rule over both sides of the River Jordan
from a resurgent former Mufti of Jerusalem leading a radical army of fanatical
Islamists.

The Mufti’s leadership of the All
Palestine Government was feared and discredited by many in the Arab League, and
it was dissolved by Egyptian leader, Gabel Abdel Nasser, in 1959.

It didn’t help al-Husseini’s Islamic
cause when King Abdullah was assassinated on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem
while he was visiting the two mosques on July 20, 1951. He was killed by
Mustafa Ashu, a militant member of al-Husseini’s Jihad al-Muqaddas.

In a strange diplomatic quirk, King
Hussein, the grandson of Abdullah who had been present and witnessed the
assassination of his grandfather, lifted the ban that had exiled al-Husseini
and the king even received him as an honored guest in Jerusalem in 1967 after
Hussein had driven out Yasser Arafat’s PLO terror group from Jordan following
Arafat’s failed coup attempt to usurp power in Jordan in what became known as
Black September, named after the bloody month of fighting in 1970. King Hussein had hosted Arafat’s fighters to
wage terror against Israel from Jordan, but Arafat turned on the king after rightly
assumed that Jordan was majority Palestine and that it was being governed by a
minority Arab tribe. Arafat lost that battle. He and his remnant militants
withdrew to Lebanon from where they continued their terror campaign against
Israel.

Israel lost patience with Arafat
in 1982 and attacked in force.

By then, Arafat and his
Palestinian terrorists had destabilized Lebanon and its Maronite-led government
by provoking events that led to the Lebanon Civil War. The military incursion
of Israel’s army into Lebanon precipitated the exodus of Arafat and his terror
gang to exile in Tunis where he remained until allowed to make his next terror
base in Ramallah by the mistaken virtue of the Oslo Accords.

The Gaza Strip was under Egyptian
rule until they were driven out in the Arab war against Israel of 1967. In six
days Israel captured the whole of the Gaza Strip as it forced the Egyptian army
back over the Suez Canal. There were an
estimated 200,000 Palestinian Arabs ling in the Gaza Strip. Most were Bedouin,
fishermen, and tribesmen. Israel began to build agricultural developments which
attracted Arab economic migration into the Strip.

Gaza remained under Israeli
military administration following the peace agreement with Egypt of 1979 until
the Oslo Accords of 1994. In a phased transfer of administration, the
Palestinians were allowed to control much of the Strip with Gaza City as their
provincial administrative headquarters while Israel retained the Jewish
community blocs and military areas.

Troubles began in 2000 when
Arafat launched a serious wave of terrorism known as the Second Intifada. This
included suicide combings, terrorist incursions, rockets, and bombings
emanating from the Gaza Strip against Israeli military and civilians,
particularly by the emerging Hamas and Palestinian jihadi groups.

In 2005, the Israeli Knesset
approved Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan for a total Israeli withdrawal from
Gaza. Heart-wrenching scenes took place as Israeli soldiers forcibly carried
Jews from their homes and bused them out of the Strip. Israel continued to
control the border crossings.

Following Israel’s withdrawal,
the Palestinian Authority, under the terms of the Oslo Accords, were granted
the authority to administer the Gaza Strip. The Accord also granted Israel the
permission to control the air and sea space of the Strip as an essential
security precaution.

President George Bush allowed the
Palestinian to hold parliamentary elections in 2006, despite Israeli
predictions of emerging dangers from an ill-formed and volatile Palestinian political
divide. The result was a victory for Hamas which took 74 of the 132 seats, a
majority of 56%.

When Hamas took power, it refused to accept all signed
agreements between Israel and the Palestinians despite them being witnessed and
approved by the United Nations, the European Union, Russia, and the United
States. Hamas refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist, and to renounce
violence.

In January 2007, fighting erupted
between Fatah and Hamas. Deadly clashes occurred in the Gaza Strip. The
fighting between Palestinian factions went on until May.I witnessed some of the result of this
infighting. When I was hospitalized in Tel Aviv, I awoke from my operation to
find both Fatah and Hamas injured gunmen receiving medical treatment at the
hands of Israeli doctors and nurses in the same wards and departments as
Israeli patients, including myself.

Over 600 Palestinians were killed
by other Palestinians in this civil war. Many were tortured. Captured Fatah
fighters were thrown off rooftops to their deaths by callous Hamas fighters.

While Palestinian Arabs were
killing Palestinian Arabs, Hamas spokesman, Moussa Abu Marzook, blamed the
fighting on Israel, but Associated Press reporter, and Gazan resident, Ibrahim
Barzak, wrote, “today I have seen people shot before my eyes. I heard the
screams of terrified women and children in a burning building, and I argued
with gunmen who wanted to take over my home. I have seen a lot in my years as a
journalist in Gaza, but this is the worst in has been.”

By June 2007, Hamas controlled
all of Gaza. Mahmoud Abbas declared a state of emergency, but he has never gone
to the international community to condemn Hamas. Instead, he has constantly led
a government without Hamas while arresting and imprisoning high risk Hamas
operatives in the West Bank. In June 2008, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia
declared the Ramallah-based Fatah-led administration as “the sole legitimate
Palestinian government.”

As Hamas exerted its muscle and
tried to show its political power by building a military infrastructure in the
Gaza Strip, both Israel and Egypt maintained a tight vigilance on their
respective borders with Gaza.

Violence against the dwindling
Christian population takes place in a virulently Islamic Gaza Strip. The owner
of a Christian bookshop was murdered and the Gaza City YMCA library was bombed.

Between 2008 and 2009, Hamas
launched a major war against Israel, firing thousands of Qassam rockets into Israeli
civilian towns and villages. Israel responded by sending their planes to hit thousands
of Hamas targets.

In 2012, they again tried to
inflict harm on Israelis by launching yet another rocket and terror war. They
tried a third time in 2014. This time Israel’s IDF went into Gaza to destroy
Hamas’s terror bases and to search out and destroy their complex of terror
attack tunnels which stretched for miles under the ground and reached into
Israel. Israeli officers referred to them as “the Gaza Metro.” After fifty days of this Hamas-imposed
conflict, many died on both sides.

In 2014 Fatah signed a
short-lived unity agreement with Hamas. But there can be no permanent peace
with Hamas, not by Israel and not by Fatah.

Feeling increasingly impotent,
Hamas launched “the Great March of Return” in which they, once again,
used their people as cannon fodder by leading them against the perimeter fence
between Gaza and Israel in what they call a march to return “all of
Palestine to the people.”

They timed this latest wave of
violence to coincide with Israel’s 70th Anniversary celebrations
that will stretch into May.

Hamas is hoping for a prolonged
and growing casualty list with which to condemn Israel internationally. They
are trying desperately to find credibility as a human rights and a liberation
movement, even if it means death and injury to their own people. They need the
relevance of power and an influential voice, but they are a constant reminder
of why the establishment of a Palestinian state is not a viable proposition.

When Hamas talks of Israel to
their own people they rarely refer to our country as Israel. They prefer to
call us “Zionist oppressors” or, more commonly, as “Jews.”

Hamas refuses to accept that Israel is here to stay. They place their fallacious dream of destroying Israel above a better and more peaceful future for their own people.

There is zero chance that the
ugly hydra of a Fatah-Hamas Palestine will produce anything peaceful, not
internally nor externally. Neither side of this political divide has a
tradition or the inherited values of democracy and peace. Both are based on
corruption, power, conquest, and conflict. Both are driven by anti-Semitism.

As I have frequently written,
should the Palestinians have their state, and free elections take place, Hamas
will win by the ballot or by the bullet.

Under this inevitability, it is
best not to allow this frightening certainty to occur.

Barry Shaw is the Senior
Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israeli Institute for Strategic Studies.
He is the author of “Fighting Hamas, BDS, and Anti-Semitism.”

1 comment:

Thank you My Friend. Most people in America are unaware of the aforementioned history which is a real shame. Being uninformed causes the potential for making bad judgments. Thank you so much Barry. I appreciate the great work which you are doing for YHWH'S Heritage Yisrael. I will assure you that the Temple will be built and Sacrifices and Offerings will commence once again by the descendants of the Levitical Priests but it will not be popular among the nations and even from your own people the many will oppose it (Isaiah 66:1-4). Keep up the great work! The Law of Moshe, the Psalms and the Prophets have testified to the "glories" of YHWH'S Heritage Yisrael in the Ages and WORLD-TO-COME and the PUNISHMENTS of those nations for reproaching His people. Shalom my friend!